Month: July 2008

Limited entry is a term used mostly in terms of commercial fishing when the governing body (NMFS) decides that no one else is allowed to enter a fishery, in this, the country that claims to be the leader of the FREE world.

Yesterday morning I heard a commotion on the street just outside my house and went to investigate. There were six young kids around twelve years old attempting to push a twelve foot aluminum boat to the block down the street from my house. They had a hand truck under the stern and a skateboard under the bow with a rope tied to it so they could pull.
The very next part of their, “Day out fishing” project was a broken wagon with two life jackets and a three hp motor. Another young, fisherman to be, was struggling with four more life jackets and three fishing poles.

They informed me, when I asked if they needed some help, that they couldn’t launch the boat at Curtis Avenue boat ramp because they didn’t have a key (the only boat ramp on the Point Pleasant side of the Manasquan River) and that the Maxon Avenue beach would not let them launch because it was for swimming, and fishing from a small pier.

I had them wait while I went into my garage (which contains everything that was ever made) and found a bracket with four small wheels, which mounts to the transom of any small boat. My eighty eight year old neighbors father originally owned it! It fit perfectly and one of the kids could drag the boat home by himself and the motor was carried in the hand truck they had been using. They all thanked me for their new mode of boat transportation (hummm?) and disappeared up the road.

I was truly saddened watching them disappear over the hill knowing all they wanted to do was go fishing. It reminded me of all those summer days my brothers and I spent growing up on the Manasquan River, fishing and water skiing, crabbing and seining, yet it might have been all for the good. Had they ever been able to launch their boat, find some bait and go fishing, they probably would have been stopped by the fish police and had everything confiscated because they were in possession of an illegal, seventeen and three quarter inch fluke because I don’t think anyone of those kids had a ruler! Hookem and Hackem!